Have you ever stopped to think about how your patterns of media consumption may be affecting your practice? Most yoga and meditation practitioners I know are motivated by the desire to unify body, mind, and spirit. A devoted yoga practice tends to result in a healthy, wellbalanced body; meditation brings clarity of focus and a […]
Health Food for the Mind? Read More »
We have inflicted a great deal of damage on the earth. The planet’s biosphere is the only one we know of that supports reflexively self-aware life forms. There may well be more, but for the moment this is it. Clearly we inter-are with the earth; we are made of the same elements. When we harm
Imprinting Joy on the Earth Read More »
It’s an unfortunate truth that some people can’t be happy if their ability to threaten or harm other conscious beings is in any way abridged. Of course, the notion that harm or threats of harm will make us happy is an illusion; what actually fulfills us as human beings is empowering and nurturing other beings–
Stewardship or Dominion? Read More »
I’m a happy humanist who engages in a spiritual practice based on compassion, self-care and the nurture of human and other sentient beings. I was thinking earlier today after meditating about the ways humanistic philosophy and holistic spirituality complement one another. That in turn led to some other thoughts! We’ve inherited the full range of primate
Thoughts from a Meditation Cushion Read More »
My favorite spiritual teacher happens to be the Buddhist monk,Thich Nhat Hahn. He has a radical take on the many troubling references to hell from the Jesus figure in the Christian Gospels. On this problem, Thomas Paine famously wrote, “I believe…that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of
Creative, Sane and Humane Read More »
“A philosopher’s words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul.” How like the Buddha’s Dharma is the teaching of the Greek philosopher Epicurus!
An Epicurean Feast for the Mind Read More »
On many occasions, I’ve heard people observing the behavior of chimpanzees and other Great Apes say, “Wow, that’s kind of scary.” Invariably, they’re talking about the clear similarities between these animals and ourselves. But why should our close kinship to our closest primate cousins inspire uneasiness, rather than wonder and amazement? The realization that our
Nature’s Vast Web of Life Read More »
And How to Deflect It Nonviolently It bears repeating, again and again, that human morality and ethics predate all forms of religion and philosophical schools. They are innate characteristics of Homo sapiens; their root can be seen in the reciprocity practiced by other primate species. The often-repeated epithet that we are incapable of behaving ethically
The Most Fundamental Attack on Our Essential Integrity Read More »
We all desire transcendence, an encounter with the numinous, and a deep sense of meaning in our lives. As far as we know, we are the only animals that easily succumb to a state of despondency without a strong sense of meaning– the feeling that we are connected to something much larger than ourselves. These
Six Suggestions for Achieving Transcendent Joy Read More »
“Classical Yoga” is the term given to the yoga school derived largely from Patanjali’s Yoga-Sûtra. This text, written in Sanskrit in about the second century of the Common Era, is essentially a collection of spiritual sayings. The word “sutra” (which translates as “thread”) is essentially analogous to what those in the Abrahamic tradition would call
Yoga: A Historical Perspective – Part 2 Read More »
